Mann's 1491 posited a New World with advanced populations until the Columbian Interchange. Usually that Interchange is blamed for the population crash. Not all the New World crashes; as in the Old World, civilisations rose and fell, most famously the Choltal Maya, and we may also point to Huari and to Cahokia.
Mann further had the Amazon to point to but, unlike Perú, there was no aristocracy nor quipu to bear even the semblance of memory. The Neolithic societies there fell... sometime. It was assumed that Francisco de Orellana, and the smallpox and the cocoliztli, got 'em too.
Maybe not though. Reading University (h/t the Times of London) did a study of pollens, to look at reforestation. They are saying that, in Francisco's time, only the Tapajo in Santarem died out (who were already living in the forest) and Lake Rogaguado in Bolivia got reforested. Otherwise the jungle started taking over AD 950. Marajo held out until AD 1200 until they died out too. Guiana collapsed AD 1300. Richard Spencer has a pretty solid alibi for these times and places, I think.
So: pretty much like the Postclassic Maya or the contemporary Huari - or late classical Rome - these societies faced shocks and general decay for which they were not equipped. As to which shocks: tuberculosis came onto the scene AD 1000-1300. The bogeyman of "climate change" is here as well, I guess because otherwise the grants dry up.
By the way: I'm calling it that the Caribs were what did for the Guiana civilisation. It's widely murmured in Caribbean archaeology circles that the Caribs caught, cooked, and ate the Arawaks where they found them. Barbados had a native population that vanished, such that the Europeans didn't find aught but their campsites.
CASARABE 5/26/22: Llanos de Moxos, southeast of Rogaguado, AD 500-1400.
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